The McCarthy Era - Sierra Kaplan-Nelson

During the McCarthy Era intellectuals, liberals, and anyone foreign was targeted as a possible Communist or communist sympathizer. Many were investigated by HUAC or the FBI, put under surveillance, and blacklisted. Some fled the country to avoid having their careers ruined or being followed by the FBI. Others stayed and lost their jobs. The first person I interviewed was a liberal lawyer named Victor Kaplan who represented the labor union the CIO before WWII and was later called in for questioning by HUAC. The second person was a physics PhD whose wife left him to go to Russia with her Communist lover. Because of these (and other) associations, Bruce Dayton was investigated by the FBI and blacklisted. The final person I interviewed was a Jewish immigrant from Germany, also a PhD in physics, who was thought to be a Communist spy and investigated by the FBI. He finally fled the country after several incidents with the FBI and an investigation by HUAC.


Interview 1: Victor Kaplan (June 13, 2010)
Victor Kaplan was a liberal lawyer who protested the government’s encroachment on human rights.

Before WWII I was working at a law firm in LA representing the CIO. At the time the CIO was a powerful labor union that split off from the AFL, but then rejoined it again years later. They organized on an industrial basis. The old labor union was divided on a small craft basis, while the CIO grouped everyone in the automobile industry, for instance, into one union. Their leader was very leftist, and the CIO was known for having many communists working for it, while the AFL didn’t tolerate them.

At the end of the 1930s the House of Un-American Activities Committee was going around the country forcing people to answer questions about their political preferences and other activities. I wasn’t questioned, but I was considered very leftist because of my job representing the CIO and was labeled a communist by many people. When I joined the army I wasn’t allowed to become a marine and people were told to keep an eye on me. The army’s always been a very conservative organization and they didn’t want leftists reaching positions of power.

The witch hunts for communists really reached their height during the McCarthy era though. The country almost became a fascist dictatorship. People were afraid of making phone calls, of joining any sort of organization, even of having the wrong kinds of conversations. Your livelihood was at stake. The McCarthy Era so frightened and intimidated people that the whole country was scared into becoming more conservative. I guess you could call this the “Red Scare.” The McCarthy Era terrified people; it made people afraid to deal with you because you were labeled “left wing.” The entire guild of screenwriters was blacklisted. People weren’t allowed to belong to many innocent organizations.

Towards the end of the McCarthy Era they were trying to pass a loyalty bill in California, which would make anyone who held a state job have to take a loyalty oath. This would include swearing that you had never been a member of the Communist Party. Well it would have affected me, so I went out with a lot of other people to protest. It would have made thousands of people have to lie about their pasts. It was defeated in California, although for a while it looked like it was going to pass. I know in other states it did pass, and all state employees including lawyers had to take a loyalty oath if they wanted to keep their jobs. It was terrible and unconstitutional.

A group of about thirteen lawyers and I, who had been protesting the loyalty bill, were detained by the HUAC and hauled into court to testify. The trials were held in the federal building. They asked us questions about our political preferences. Not just if we were members of the Communist Party, but also if we affiliated ourselves with other political parties or were members of different political groups in our community. They even asked us questions about our own personal beliefs. I refused to answer any of their questions, on the grounds of the 1st and 5th amendments. It was what you’d expect of a fascist dictator, like what you’d expect of Hitler. I couldn’t believe that so soon after WWII our government was trying to take away our rights of freedom of speech and thought. What they were doing was unconstitutional. It was terrifying to refuse to answer questions, although it was the right thing to do. Your career could be ruined forever. It was a real concern of all of ours.

Our entire group of lawyers gave the committee a hard time. We opposed what they were doing on the grounds of the first amendment and made them look bad on television. People’s attitude towards the witch-hunts was starting to become more negative at that time anyways, and they ended up letting us go and not blacklisting us. I still had to quit my job at my brother’s firm where I was working though, because I refused to testify as a friendly witness when one of our powerful clients asked me to. If I hadn’t quit I would have lost my brother a lot of wealthy clients.

Of course I felt threatened by the McCarthy era; I think everyone did. Your very livelihood was at stake. It permeated the entire atmosphere. People were afraid to talk, afraid to join organizations; the whole country was terrified. After about ten years the atmosphere had recovered greatly, although many top professionals never got their careers back. I don’t think anything like it has happened since, although there have been many conservative trends over the years.


Interview 2: Bruce Dayton (June 13, 2010)
Bruce Dayton was a physics PhD whose wife became a Communist, left him, and went to Russia with her communist lover, leaving him with two children and an FBI investigation.

The McCarthy era…well it was a bad period for me. I was never called before the McCarthy committee, but my troubles were that at a time when I was looking for a job, because of my associations with the man my wife ran off with, the FBI thought I was a suspicious person. At every job interview people would run a security check, find out I was blacklisted, and tell me, “Uh, thanks, but no thanks.” This happened so many times. I wanted a university position, but at that time people were so paranoid about the Red Scare that they wouldn’t hire anyone investigated by the FBI.

I had a job offer from the Tata Institute in India, where your uncle Bernard had gone, so I applied for a passport. At that time the US required you to have a passport for foreign travel. The president had declared a state of national emergency so the Secretary of State had to approve every passport application and he denied mine. So I sued for it. It took me four and a half years to get it. First I got turned down in the district court, so I went to the US court of appeals and lost again. Then I went back to the district court and my case ended up going to the Supreme Court.

During this period of four and a half years I continued applying for jobs at different colleges. I would be forthright with them and tell them, “You know I’ve been denied a passport.” They always told me they couldn’t hire me. Finally I went to work at an industrial job. After a few months I was denied a passport again and I talked to my boss about it. A few days later I got a call saying they no longer had a use for me.

So I went looking for a job out west. I finally got one in California at a teaching college. The president needed a physics teacher. I told him I was going to sue for a passport again and there could be publicity but he told me it was OK. But when I lost at the district court again the school board got involved. They voted 5-4 to pay me to disappear for a while. They said they’d pay me a whole term’s salary if I would just go away. Well I told them no, and they fired me.

Finally my case went to the Supreme Court. They heard it with two other cases, Rockwell Kent, the artist, and Walter Briehl, a psychiatrist. All of us had been denied passports by the secretary of state. The Supreme Court ruled in our favor with a 5-4 vote. They said that denying anyone a passport was unconstitutional and that everyone has the right to travel.

So I finally got a passport, but it took so long that Bernard wasn’t in India anymore, he’d gone to work in Denmark. My wife left me and disappeared for thirty years in the summer of 1950 and it wasn’t until 1959 that I was allowed to leave the country. So Bernard and I set something up in Switzerland and I went to work in Bern. I stayed there for two years, worked in Denmark for a year, and finally went to India to work at the Tata Institute after all. After about five and a half years in Europe and India I came back to the United States. At that time the climate was completely different. Before I left the US was still in a climate of fear, but when I came back I got a job at California State in LA and worked there until I retired. I was a moderately famous physicist in Europe but nobody knew me in the US. But still, I guess you could say that everything turned out just fine.

I don’t know anything about what’s going on nowadays from personal experience, but it seems to me that what is going on with Muslims is remarkably similar to what happened in the McCarthy era. The terrorist attack on 9/11 left the country in a very similar state of fear.

A Time article from 1958 on the Supreme Court case that allowed people the right to travel can be found at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,891897,00.html

A report on Bruce Dayton’s specific case can be found at:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=357&invol=144



Interview 3: Tom Peters, on the experiences of his father Bernard Peters (via email, June 13, 2010 – June 15, 2010)
Bernard Peters was Jewish physicist and a German immigrant who worked with Oppenheimer to develop the atomic bomb during WWII. After the war he was investigated as a Communist sympathizer and regarded with extreme suspicion by the FBI. Tom Peters is a historian in his free time.

Bernard was one of Oppenheimer's two graduate students at Berkeley. The families were friends as Bernard was already twenty-seven when he started studying. Oppie's son Peter was my age and Toni, the daughter, was Susan's. Bernard worked on the atom bomb project, "Project Manhattan" at Berkeley, and we were slated to go to Los Alamos where Bernard was working. Hannah had even bought me a snowsuit when suddenly everything was canceled. Bernard and Hannah did not know why.

Well it turned out that the FBI had discovered that one of the two German-Jewish refugees working on the project was a spy for the Russians and was giving them information about the project. The other was Klaus Fuchs who worked in Los Alamos and who eventually did turn out to be the spy and later fled to East Germany. J. Edgar Hoover was convinced that it was Bernard, so he no longer had clearance to work on the project.

On top of it all, Oppenheimer came under suspicion. His brother Frank who was also a physicist, but not on the project was indeed a member of the American Communist Party as was Frank's wife Jackie, the daughter of a longshoreman. Robert Oppenheimer was something of a coward and so he badmouthed some of his colleagues, among them Bernard, was always outspoken about his political views and quite naïve in some respects. To Bernard he said that he was shielding him from difficulties and to the FBI he said that he was a "dangerous radical." The FBI never found anything bad out about Bernard because there was nothing bad to discover. The only thing that they could find to accuse him of was that he was "prematurely and excessively anti-fascist!" That was the epithet they put on his dossier. Prematurely meant before Pearl Harbor, that is before the US entered the war. Of course he was anti-fascist before then. That is why he fled Germany. After all he had been put into Dachau, the concentration camp, at the very beginning years before Pearl Harbor in 1933 and had gotten out because of his mother. What "excessive" meant in relation to anti-fascist, no one ever could explain. As Bernard later said, J. Edgar Hoover never forgave him for not being Klaus Fuchs, and he carried a grudge against Bernard until he (Hoover) died.

When we moved to Rochester, New York in 1945 (where Bernard got a job as assistant professor at the University of Rochester) the troubles moved with us. The then president of the university was very courageous, much more so than Oppenheimer, and when the FBI insisted that he fire Bernard he refused. It was during that time that a telephone company technician came to the house one day and told Hannah that something was wrong with the telephone and he had to fix it. The next day Philip Morrison, Oppenhimer's other former PhD student who was visiting us, picked up the receiver to phone someone. This was in the days before dialing and one had to wait for the operator to come on and say, "Number please?" This could take a moment or two if the operator was busy with other callers. In that pause, Phil heard typing on the other end of the line, and he realized that he was connected to an office that was listening in to our calls. This was years before reliable recording devices and a typist was probably waiting on the other end to take shorthand of what was said. Phil yelled into the phone: "If you can't even bug a phone line so that we can't hear you, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" He then took the receiver apart and Hannah photographed the "bug" as evidence should we be further persecuted in any way. The "telephone technician" – who was in reality an FBI technician – came the very next day and took the microphone out again.

Hannah also remembered, but I have blocked it out of my memory, that Susan and I were shadowed by FBI men one our way home from school. All I do remember is that I can to this very day smell an FBI man a mile away against the wind. They all acted as though they had learned to sleuth from old B-movies with Humphrey Bogart, soft fedora hats and raincoats with turned up collars and all! It sounds improbable, but it was true at least until the 1960s.

I remember Bernard telling me about traveling to Washington DC to testify before HUAC. Being rather politically naïve, he was convinced that he could explain and convince them that he was no dangerous radical. But of course, the FBI had made up the committee's minds and Joseph McCarthy was only interested in media publicity and in his career. Any sensation would do - even if it were not true.

It was around that time that Micha, Bernard and Lena's brother in Israel, came for a visit to the US. His typewriter was stolen off the ship or in customs when he arrived. It reappeared, sent back to him in Rochester with no explanation. Bernard later discovered that one of J. Edgar Hoover's agents, an eager young man named Richard Nixon, later President Nixon, had stolen it to see whether the letters matched up with some incriminating letters that had been typewritten, presumably by Klaus Fuchs. Typewriters were only manual, not even electric at the time and each had characteristic wear and irregularity in the way it hit the paper, so that the "handwriting" of each machine was unique. Needless to say, it was not Micha's typewriter. I later found a letter in the Cornell archives that Hans Bethe, a physicist and Nobel Prize winner, had written to Oppenheimer at the time, saying he hoped that what he had heard Oppenheimer had said about Bernard Peters was not true. So there were obviously others who were also outraged at Oppenheimer's cowardice.

Bernard's case finally blew up and led to Oppenheimer's famous case before HUAC and Congress. Ed Condon, another physicist who I think was in Los Alamos at the time, or at any rate in New Mexico, wrote a letter to Oppenheimer berating him for lying to Bernard about protecting him. The FBI intercepted the letter and Oppenheimer was accused of having made the whole thing up. The case, and the fact that all his former friends (including his brother) now had ruined careers, ruined Oppenheimer’s career and personal life. Kitty – his wife, an alcoholic – finally drank herself to death on a friend's yacht in the Caribbean. Peter dropped out of sight and finally got back on his feet and became a building contractor in Albuquerque. Toni committed suicide, and Oppenheimer himself died totally abandoned by everyone of cancer. Frank however, survived after having tried to be a cattle rancher in Colorado with no success for a couple of years. He became the founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco; Clotilde and I knew him well and were very fond of him and Jackie, and of Frank's second wife Millie after Jackie died.

We left the US for India because Bernard had the opportunity to build up primary research there, a very attractive proposal. Also he was sick and tired of being hounded by the government and hoped to find some peace outside the country. Eventually the government refused to renew his and Hannah's passports while in India and they were forced to take back their German citizenship in the mid 1950s.

There are many more stories, of being strip searched by the French Secret Service on the request of the FBI while crossing form England to France in 1948, and so on. Bernard and Hannah had fled that kind of government in Germany and found it again a few years later in the US. I wonder why they did not become totally disillusioned with any and all governments after that.

Escaping the Vietnam War - Gabe Tran

My topic was on the Vietnam War focused on the immigration of the Vietnamese refugees. Here i have 3 interviews with my family members who each had their own personal experiences. My mother was a regular civilian who was able to give me an idea of how everyday life was like. My brother was a young child at the time but had a first hand experience with escaping, and my father was drafted into South Vietnam's army just before the fall of Saigon. These three interviews have provided me with valuable knowledge.

Interview with Nuong Tran:

Introduction:
Nuong Tran is a 55 year old house wife and loving mother of 3 sons. During the war she lived in Saigon with her family. She had lived through the war her whole life and experienced many of its hardships. As she looks back on her life, she is glad that it is all behind her now and is very grateful to be where she is today.

How was life in Vietnam?
When I was small, I had to balance a lot of things in life. I had to work and go to school at the same time. Money was tight back then. I was only in the elementary school when I began selling lottery tickets to make the extra money my family needed. I was very active in the church and would always do volunteer work when I could. I was very religious and found happiness in my church. Although I lived a very hard and poor life, I was able to get through things.

How was your everyday life affected by the war?
Being born in 1955, I do not know how life was before the fighting began. But as time went on, I was able to tell that it became even harder to live. But my mother tells me that before, she lived in the North on the country side. But when the Viet Cong began to invade, she was forced to move down south. She was able to escape to Saigon and rebuild a life from there. The war made our lives even more difficult. Our family was not able to make very much money as the war progressed. I was then forced to drop out of school as my situation did not allow it. The schooling fees were far too expensive for us to afford especially under the conditions of the war. I had to give up many of the small luxuries I had. We all had to make sacrifices.

What were the American soldiers like?
I was very fond of the soldiers as a child. They were very loving and nice towards us children. Whenever I would see a soldier walk by I would always run up to them asking them in broken English for a piece of candy or some chewing gum. “Okay gum? Okay gum?” and if I was lucky they would give me a piece of candy. My favorite kind was the small colorful chocolate pieces (M&M’s). I liked it so much because although the weather was hot, the chocolate did not melt in my hands. Every time I would see a soldier I would always get excited. Although they were very kind to the children, deep down I was afraid of them. They were big and looked very strange. They looked intimidating to me. I felt like at any moment they could take my life. I would always get in trouble by my mother when I go up to a soldier. But I really liked the chocolate pieces.

What were some significant outcomes of the war?
The Viet Cong had discovered that my sister is working for an American company. With this knowledge, they discriminated against me and my whole family. We had been restricted from our rights. It was very hard to find jobs or money.
When Saigon finally fell, my family was forced out of the city. They moved us into the jungle where we had to farm for a living. We had to grow our own foods and cut down trees for shelter and other purposes. Life became filled with hard labor.

During the fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975, what was going through your mind?
I was very shocked and alarmed; I did not know what was to become of us. I thought that the Viet Cong were going to come in and kill us all. A lot of things were changing. I’m not sure but it seemed like they were assisting our poorer neighbors. I was told that the Viet Cong valued the poor and despised the rich. And knowing that my sister was a worker for an American company, they forced us into the jungle. I really thought we were going to die. I didn’t have much experience farming, but I was able to learn from my mother. Here we survived for some time until we were able to return to the city.

Why did you want to move to America?
We were not able to find jobs or anything in Vietnam. We were told that America held many opportunities for us and that they were very welcoming. We heard of all the riches America had. I didn’t really know all about the details of America, I just knew that it was a better place than here in Vietnam. When we heard of the refugee programs that America had we filled out the applications and took the opportunity right away.

How did you move to America?
We were able to move to America because we had an Amerasian child. But he was not my biological son. He was my nephew, my sister’s son. But when my sister was killed during the war, I took him in as my own. I adopted him. We had to live in the Philippines for 6 months before being allowed into America. Here they educated us about American life, the language, and how to get a job. They were preparing us for the transition into America. In the Philippines the housings were very crowded and run down. There was only one bed while there were 7 of us. The size of the space was as small as a storage shack. Food was of very poor quality and low in quantity.

Why did you choose Seattle?
I had family who lived here in Seattle who were willing to sponsor us into America. They supported us and helped us rebuild our lives in America. They helped us adapt to all the American customs. The first few years were difficult for it felt even more difficult getting jobs than back in Vietnam. I did not know much English and for some time I had to do low paying laboring jobs. 


Interview with Nguyen Tran:

Introduction:
Nguyen Tran is my eldest brother at age 30. During his time in Vietnam, was still a young child residing in Saigon. Although young at the time, he had a very significant experience that occurred that may have changed his whole life. Today he is a recently married and happy husband, he was glad to tell me about his time in Vietnam as he had never really spoken to anyone about it.

How was life in Vietnam?
It is very hard to recall but I remember that it was very difficult back then. Mom and dad worked very hard to get dinner on the table and looking back I sort of took that for granted. Dat (2nd brother) and I were very mischievous kids back then. We would always be getting into trouble. At school we would always get scolded by the teacher. But mom always emphasized how important school was, so… we’d get scolded even more once we got home haha… I remember when dad enrolled us both into martial arts class. We were so excited for it that after the second lesson, Dat had already put his skills to use. He went out and got hired. Some kid from school paid him a few bucks to beat up some other kid from around the block so…. He did haha… Their parents weren’t too happy… Well our parents and our teacher was then informed about this and we were kicked out of the martial arts school. I was pretty upset and mad with Dat. I really wanted to learn! I’ve always been the more mature one of us two, but for some reason I’d always be taking the hit worse. But yeah… being a kid we were pretty care free and unaware of what was going on.

Did you want to leave Vietnam? Why or why not?
Part of me did want to leave, and part of me didn’t. I was excited to leave because of the many stories that I had heard of America. I talked to one of our cousins (who was also a child) who was already in America through the phone. He kept talking about toys and T.V. which got me very excited. He told me of how fun everything was and all the cartoon shows. As a child, that’s all I really cared about haha. But then, I didn’t want to leave my friends behind. We had to leave our whole family here. Although I didn’t know them too well yet, it really saddened me. And when we were in the Philippines, I met this one girl… I know I was still young but it felt like love heh. I really liked her. I didn’t want to leave but we were already in the Philippines, we were already on our way to America. When our education program was done, we went our own separate ways as we prepared to enter America. I had forgotten to ask her where she was going or her address and even her e-mail address! I thought I was never going to see her again. Ten years later after I graduated from high school I was able to reunite with her. We became friends again but she went to school in Boston, at Harvard. And on top of the distance between us, mom didn’t really like her. She always gave me trouble about her. So I guess it never really worked out. But uhh… I guess I’m pretty glad I got to leave Vietnam. When I went back there recently I was able to tell the difference in life quality. Even though here in America, we still live pretty poorly, it’s a lot better than over there haha. But life in Vietnam is improving, what really surprised me when I made my visit back there was the paved roads haha. I remember people having to wear face masks due to the dirt roads they used to have. And all the frequent street floods because there was no sewage system. I sort of miss those floods though, they were fun.
What was the process of escaping by boat like?
I was only 7 years old then. My parents had to pay smugglers money to assist us in escaping. I left with auntie dressed as if we were villagers going out to fish. I was very confused back then. I did not know what was going on. All I had been told was that I was going to leave everyone for a very long time. I didn’t have very much with me, nothing but the clothes on my back. I remember seeing mom’s face. She was smiling, yet crying at the same time. Happy, yet sad. I was young, I didn’t know what to make of it. I had no clue of what to expect.

What happened when you were caught?
Like I said before, I really didn’t know what was going on. We had only set sail for no more than 10 minutes when the water patrol stopped us. They questioned us for a bit and our guide was trying to explain how we were just going out to catch some fish. But I guess they didn’t buy it. I remember the patrol officers being real jerks to us calling us names and using foul language. It was as if he had a natural hate for people. They took our boat back to shore and we were transported to the nearby prison.

How was it in prison?
The officers were pretty harsh. I mean they didn’t torture us or anything but they dragged my arm pretty hard as they led me to my cell haha. The guards were very stern but for the most part no harm was done to us. But I was scared, I thought we would be in there forever. They didn’t give us much food to eat, I thought I was going to starve to death. If I was lucky, they’d give me and auntie a can of condensed milk and hot water. We’d mix it and drink it. It was the best thing they served us there haha. We were in there for about 3 or 4 days until mom and dad were able to find us. They bailed us out and we were free to go. It went a lot more smooth and simpler than I thought.

What was your impression of America?
I was already impressed when I entered the airplane. There I could notice the substantial quality difference between Vietnam and America. The seats were nice and comfy, the people were polite, and the food was good! I mean Vietnamese food was free yet good! Well I guess the food wasn’t technically free because we had paid for airplane tickets… when I looked out the window over America, I was astonished. I saw the big city buildings that I had never seen in my life before. They were monstrous. This place was so much different compared to Vietnam. Everything was just, so much bigger! When we got off the airplane, the first thing I noticed right away was the completely different climate change. I was not used it, I was used to the hot temperatures of Vietnam. I also noticed the courtesy of other people. The flight attendants smiled us on out and even gave me a little badge. Everything around me seemed so expensive and high quality. At the airport I felt as if I was in some space station.

How is life here is compared to Vietnam?
Life here is a lot more complicated than back in Vietnam. There’s so much more to worry about. Well… that might be because back in Vietnam I was a child but I could assume. There was simply a lot more aspects to life here. I guess mom and dad knew this already because prior to coming here we had to fill out a lot of paper work. And form mines and Dat’s file, they filled our age out one year younger than we actually were. They were afraid that we could not keep up in school with our other peers. Which was probably true because school was difficult to start out. It was a lot different than from in Vietnam. The teachers had different teaching styles, the curriculum was also vastly different, and in all the environment of school was different. But I guess America’s environment in all was different. Let’s just say, America and Vietnam were like two different worlds.



 
Interview with Hoang Tran:

Introduction:
Hoang Tran is my father, at age 55 he remembers much of the war. He predominantly lived in Saigon but for a short time during childhood he lived in a small village on the country side. Being drafted into the army, I am sure he has valuable information for me to discover.

What was your role in the Vietnam War?
I started in the army school in 1974, I was a soldier in training. I had not yet completed the training course when the war was over. When the communist took the city of Saigon, they came into the school and dispersed us all. We were all forced to go back home. I guess militarily, I did not have a very big role because I was still in training.

What were you doing before you were drafted?
Before joining the army, I was a student in school. At the time I was currently finishing up high school. Also, I was really involved with the church and had been studying to become a priest. I would go to the monastery after school whenever I could. My mother finally noticed my interest in religion and suggested that I join their classes. Here I met long life friends. But I was not able to become a priest and neither did many of my other classmates. It was a hard time period. Many of us had to leave class. Looking back at my class photo, I can tell you who’s currently living in America or Vietnam, or who has passed away. They were all good friends. Remember all those old men who came to our house for your brother’s wedding? They were my classmates! We had not seen each other for many years. I remembered, since we all had really common names, they’d give us a number. They called me Hoang64, and that’s what they still called me when we met for the first time in 30 years.

What were your thoughts when you were drafted?
I felt very nationalistic about it. I felt as if it was my duty to become a soldier and fight for my country. I was 19 then and was eager to join the army. My mother was very worried for me and did not want me to leave. I was her eldest son; she couldn’t have been able to bear losing me. Looking back, I was pretty reckless with my eagerness to join the army. At the time, I did not think about life or death. All the propaganda had filled my mind with nationalistic ideas. After the Americans had left, the army was in great need for more soldiers, and I couldn’t have been happier to serve my country.
One thing I remember that they taught us was that when we were in battle, anyone who was facing you on the opposite side… we shoot them. We were all Vietnamese. Vietnamese killing other Vietnamese. The Americans had already left, I don’t know how they were able to differentiate from us and the Viet Cong when even we had trouble. The Viet Cong did not have any sort of uniform. But now it was just us. The Americans had left and now the whole weight of the war was on us. We had to fight off the Viet Cong. Communist, yes, but nonetheless they were still Vietnamese. That was one thing I had trouble with. The thought of killing a fellow brother.

How has your life changed after the war?
They then did a 3 day re-educating program where they taught us of the new ways they were trying to incorporate. I didn’t really make of it much. It was just really tedious for me. I really tried to ignore all the nonsense they were trying to tell us. But what really pissed me off was that they changed the city name to Ho Chi Minh City and even changed the flag to some communist starred flag. It was quite hideous. But it became illegal for us to even have the old flag. We had to throw them away or hide them if we had any. They were trying to force us all to become communist.

How is life in America?
It is hard. But no doubt we are better off here than we were in Vietnam. Luckily I was able to continue my profession as a truck driver here in America. After the war and returning to the city, I had taken up this job. It was really all I could get because I was never able to finish school. It made decent money and every now and then I would run into a little extra money on the way. I can’t tell you how though. But the truck driving here in America is a lot different than when I was in Vietnam. Things are a lot more organized that I can’t do any sorts of “hustles” to get that bit of extra money. It was really hard for me to start off. We had very little money to start with and I didn’t have a truck to drive. I had to borrow one from a friend and from there I saved up my money until I was able to buy my own truck. Your mom also gave me a lot of trouble. Ever since we moved here she has been more and more troublesome. I really don’t want to tell you though for she might hear me nagging about her. Let’s just say things here are much more complicated than they are in Vietnam. A lot of conflicts and problems have formed since we moved here. But then again a lot of problems were solved.